Background: Background checks are used in nursing education to assess public risk. To date, no study has described the most common and most serious findings in nursing students.
Purpose: Our study describes the most common and most serious characteristics of BGC findings in nursing students attending large universities.
Method: Our retrospective study describes characteristics of aggregated, de-identified background check data from a convenience sample of 16 US nursing programs set in large universities 2014-2019.
Findings: Sampled programs collected 45,613 background checks, with 1548 findings (3.4 %). Severity of findings included criminal (62.5 %), non-criminal (4.6 %), felony (0.8 %), and other (11.6 %). Severity data were missing from 20.4 % of records. Finding types included substance use (23.7 %), disorderly conduct (8.7 %), property crimes (2.4 %) and crimes against persons (1 %). Type data was missing from 64.3 % of records.
Discussion: Future research should examine whether background check type or severity indicates a nursing student poses a public risk.
Keywords: Background check; Nursing education; Nursing students.
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